The Bellbottom Incident by Neve Maslakovic Page B

feeling.” I knew he didn’t think much of feelings in the context of time-travel mechanics, so I attempted a different explanation. “As a time traveler, she shouldn’t be able to interact quite this much with the locals, should she? I mean, we did in Pompeii, but that was because most of the town did not have long to live, as awful as that sounds. And we fit into near time, but she doesn’t, not yet.”  
    “I wouldn’t read too much into it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that just as you can unexpectedly become time-stuck, the opposite can happen as well. You waltz with ease into a situation in which you have no logical place. Sometimes the bold move accomplishes what the stealthy one can’t. Sabina walked into St. Olaf’s and everyone mistook her for a freshman in a Roman costume. Could anyone have predicted that?”
    Abigail had a different explanation. “Weren’t people in the seventies on drugs much of the time—LSD and so on?”
    “Well, I don’t know about much of the time,” I said.
    “Maybe everyone is just so used to being in a haze and seeing weird things that a person showing up out of nowhere is no big deal. Speaking of which, you don’t think Xave is high on something, do you?”
    “Just alcohol,” I said.  
    “Did you know LSD stands for lysergic acid diethylamide and is made from a rye fungus?” Dr. Little said in an educational (but not very helpful at the moment) note. “It is rather unfortunate that Mooney chose last night to get inebriated. He just kept repeating that they—the book club members—were headed to a tree.”  
    “I’ll get him back,” I said. “He’s probably downstairs—I noticed a coffee pot by the TV.”
    He wasn’t downstairs. He was slumped against the wall just outside the room, on the hallway floor with his knees drawn up, snoring.
    “Gone east,” he mumbled when we tried to shake him awake. “Tree.”
    I left Abigail and Dr. Little to the task and went downstairs to fetch coffee. The three students in their Halloween costumes were still asleep in front of the old-fashioned-looking TV. I reached for one of the mugs stacked on a tray next to the coffee percolator, then changed my mind.
    The door of Room 104 was shut. I hesitated, then raised a hand to knock, figuring that asking Gilberte’s roommate, Jenny, where the book club had gone might be faster than trying to sober up Xave. History had other plans for me; my knuckles barely grazed the wood, hard as I tried. There was an ABBA poster on the door, with the members of the Swedish pop group paired off on a park bench, Anni-Frid and Benny smooching and Agnetha and Björn side by side. The poster seemed to mock me, as if it were underlining that I was misplaced in time.  
    I went back to plan A—sobering up Xave. I softly walked past the sleeping students to the humming percolator, which one of them must have turned on before drifting off in an easy chair. The mugs looked reasonably clean, if mismatched and slightly dinged. Just typical dorm items.
    I carried the mug back up the four flights of stairs to find Xave still slumped against the wall, gently snoring. Dr. Little was standing with his hands at his waist, like a two-sided teacup, tapping an impatient foot. Abigail turned up her hands at my approach. “Are we sure he’s not high on something?”
    I squatted down with the mug in my hand. Xave’s eyes were soon open, though he was still a bit greenish around the cheeks. It took all three of us to pull him to his feet and steady him. Once we had Xave safely back inside his room and in the chair and he had imbibed more of the coffee, Abigail knelt down next to him. “Prof— I mean, uh, Xave. Where did they take Sally?”  
    He looked at Abigail with moist eyes and gave a small shrug, not of lack of concern but an indication of his limited knowledge of the matter. “East. Tree.”
    “The East Coast, you mean? But where?”  
    He shook his head.
    Abigail’s eyes were